We’ve teamed up with CEWE to bring you the 60 days of Summer competition where we want to see your best shots over summer and the most impressive entrants will win some incredible prizes.
The 60 days of Summer competition is open to all UK entrants over the age of 18, and we want to see your favourite summer shots right the way through to August 31st. We’ve put five incredible summery photo tips below that you can use as inspiration.
The winner will take home a digital subscription worth £200 including Digital Camera, NPhoto, PhotoPlus and Photography Week magazines, plus you’ll also receive a CEWE product voucher worth £100. There are also £75 and £50 CEWE product vouchers up for grabs for 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
By the way, if you submit your photos to the 60 days of Summer competition, you can also enter the CEWE Photo Award competition at the same time! The CEWE Photo Award has 10 categories: Sport, Landscape, People, Nature, Animals, Travel & Culture, Food & Cooking, Hobby & Leisure, Architecture & technology and Aerial Photos. There’s a huge €250,000 in prizes, with 1st place taking a holiday worth €15,000, €7,500 worth of photography equipment, €2500 in CEWE products and an award.
Plus, for every photo submitted, CEWE donates €0.10 to global charity SOS Children’s Villages, supporting disadvantaged families across the world. Click here for more information on the CEWE Photo Award 2023. Enter now!
Exploit the clear night skies
The hotter summer weather brings with it some of the clearest cloud-free nights you’ll see all year. In the UK, you’ll get the best views of the Milky Way at this time of year, though this will vary depending on where you are in the world. Avoid areas where light pollution from bright cities and towns will be an issue, or look at a dark sky map to check out ideal locations for better star shots.
A tripod is essential as you’ll need to take long exposures to suck in all of the available light at night. Use a wide-angle lens for landscapes and open your aperture up to its widest value and set the ISO to 1600 to begin. Go for a 10 second exposure to keep the stars as pin-points of light, or shoot for a longer 30 seconds to turn them into star trails. You can also blend multiple 30 second exposures together to create longer star trails when you’re editing too!
Take environmental portraits
Add some fantastic environmental portraits to your portfolio by teaming up with a friend or model and heading out on location. Whether you go into the city to shoot against graffiti adorned walls for an urban street feel, or venture out into the great outdoors for bright summery candid portraits that make great family photos at the beach or on long summer walks in the evening sun.
Don’t be deterred by poor weather conditions too! Take your camera with you on overcast days too as cloudy skies will mean softer lighting, more gentle shadows for less harsh contrast and more flattering light.
Show some (lens) flare
Lens flare occurs when stray light comes in from the side of the lens resulting in washed out colours and low contrast. While most photographers tend to avoid this and many lenses come with a lens hood to stop this happening, intentionally including lens flare is a brilliant way of adding extra sunshine to your shots for a completely summery feel.
All you need to do is remove your lens hood and shoot towards the sun, or side-on to the sun, until the sun is just out of frame in the corner of your shot, you’ll then see incredible colourful streaks of light fill your image and a drop in clarity.
Use Live View on your camera to compose rather than your viewfinder when shooting towards the sun and never look at the sun directly through an optical viewfinder.
Reflect(or) on your lighting
Achieve even more looks with natural light using an inexpensive 5-in-1 reflector. These come in different shapes and sizes and allow you to manipulate the available light to achieve a brand-new look and this is ideal for portraiture, still life and macro photos. 5-in-1 reflectors usually have silver and gold sides to make the reflected light a cooler or warmer tint.
A white side helps reflect ambient light without changing its colour temperature and a black side helps reduce light being reflected in a scene. It’s also worth experimenting with the semi-translucent scrim inside which you can position between the light source and your subject to soften the light for more gentle shadows.
Add a dash of flash
The summer sun can be strong and overpowering, leaving your subjects in a strong silhouette with no detail in their faces. Flash is a great way to balance the lighting in this scenario. Make sure your subject turns their back to the sun so they’re being backlit, this also stops them from squinting which happens when they’re facing the sun.
To add your flash you can either use your camera’s built-in pop-up flash if it has one, or attach a flashgun to your hotshoe. We only want a small amount of flash to reveal enough detail in the face so start with the lowest power setting on your flash and attach a diffuser if you have one.
Take a test shot and increase the flash power if needed until the natural light is perfectly balanced with the flash and the details in the face are revealed just enough without overexposing the skin detail.
Now it's time to submit your shots!
We want you to enter your best summer shots to be in with a chance of winning a digital subscription to Digital Camera, NPhoto, PhotoPlus and Photography Week magazines, plus a CEWE product voucher worth £100. There are also £75 and £50 CEWE product vouchers up for grabs for 2nd and 3rd place.
From environmental portraits to amazing astro landscapes, or portraits taken with flash to those dripping with lens flare, we want to see your best summer photos. Enter for your chance to win some top prizes before the closing deadline 31st August 2022. Good luck! Enter now!
